Claude Sonnet 4.6 vs GPT-5.4 Mini

Head-to-head by test (our 12-test suite):

• Wins for Claude Sonnet 4.6: creative_problem_solving 5 vs 4 (Sonnet tied for 1st of 54 with 7 others), tool_calling 5 vs 4 (Sonnet tied for 1st of 54 with 16 others), safety_calibration 5 vs 2 (Sonnet tied for 1st of 55 with 4 others), agentic_planning 5 vs 4 (Sonnet tied for 1st of 54 with 14 others). These strengths mean Sonnet is more reliable when selecting functions, sequencing multi-step agentic tasks, refusing harmful requests, and producing non-obvious feasible ideas.
• Wins for GPT-5.4 Mini: structured_output 5 vs 4 (GPT tied for 1st of 54 with 24 others) and constrained_rewriting 4 vs 3 (GPT rank 6 of 53, 25 models share this score). GPT’s advantages translate to tighter JSON/schema compliance and better compression into hard character limits.
• Ties (equal scores): strategic_analysis 5, faithfulness 5, classification 4, long_context 5, persona_consistency 5, multilingual 5 — both models match at top-tier performance in reasoning, sticking to source material, classification, long-context retrieval, persona maintenance, and multilingual output.
• External benchmarks (Epoch AI): Claude Sonnet 4.6 scores 75.2% on SWE-bench Verified and 85.8% on AIME 2025, which supports its coding and math reasoning strengths; GPT-5.4 Mini has no external SWE/AIME scores in this payload. In short: Sonnet dominates agentic, safety, and creative problem-solving; GPT-5.4 Mini wins where strict structured output and constrained rewriting matter, while both tie on many core reasoning and multilingual tasks.

Per-token listing: Claude Sonnet 4.6 charges $3 input / $15 output per M-token; GPT-5.4 Mini charges $0.75 input / $4.5 output per M-token. Output-only cost examples: 1M output tokens = $15 (Sonnet) vs $4.50 (GPT); 10M = $150 vs $45; 100M = $1,500 vs $450. If you count equal input+output volume, total per 1M token-pair = $18 (Sonnet) vs $5.25 (GPT); for 10M pairs = $180 vs $52.50; for 100M pairs = $1,800 vs $525. Teams doing high-throughput inference, large-scale chat, or cost-sensitive consumer products should prefer GPT-5.4 Mini for the 3.33× lower per-token bill. Teams that must prioritize safety calibration, complex tool-driven agents, or enterprise coding/management workflows should budget for Sonnet 4.6’s higher cost.

Choose Claude Sonnet 4.6 if you need best-in-class tool-calling, safety calibration, agentic planning, or top creative problem-solving—for multi-step agents, complex codebase work, or safety-sensitive enterprise apps. Budget for $3 input / $15 output per M-token. Choose GPT-5.4 Mini if you need a cost-efficient model for high-throughput products or workloads that require strict structured output or constrained rewriting—it costs $0.75 input / $4.5 output per M-token and matches Sonnet on long-context, faithfulness, classification, persona consistency, strategic analysis, and multilingual tasks.